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As if the A's Didn't Have Enough to Worry About

Threats to move the A's away from their East Bay home created a wellspring of controversy in Oakland. But now another issue looms — namely, contraction to a larger market. Apparently, talk has been in the air for several years now, according to The Bay Citizen. And in the interim, several minor-market teams were placed on the chopping block (and later saved by legal wrangling). Their ranks include The Expos, The Twins, The Marlins, The Tampa Bay Rays , The A's, and The Pirates. There are, indeed, many favorable arguments for contraction, considering all the inequities of major league baseball. It's set up as a revenue share, so that larger market teams have to give millions of dollars a year to their unprofitable peers. That's a major point of contention, wrote Fox Sports columnist Ken Rosenthal. But contracting the smaller teams still seems like a last-ditch solution.